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Losing the Public Debate On Global Warming
Hugh Pickens writes "Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who first made warnings about climate change in the 1980s, says that public skepticism about the threat of man-made climate change has increased despite the growing scientific consensus. He says that without public support, it will be impossible to make the changes he and his colleagues believe need to occur to protect future generations from the effects of climate change. 'The science has become stronger and stronger over the past five years while the public perception is has gone in completely the other direction. That is not an accident,' says Hansen. 'There is a very concerted effort by people who would prefer to see business to continue as usual. They have been winning the public debate with the help of tremendous resources.' Hansen's comments come as recent surveys have revealed that public support for tackling climate change has declined dramatically in recent years. A recent BBC poll found that 25% of British adults did not think global warming is happening and over a third said many claims about environmental threats are 'exaggerated,' compared to 24 per cent in 2000. Dr. Benny Peiser, director of skeptical think tank The Global Warming Policy Foundation, says it's time to stop exaggerating the impact of global warming and accept the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change. 'James Hensen has been making predictions about climate change since the 1980s. When people are comparing what is happening now to those predictions, they can see they fail to match up.'"
But shouldn't we be concerned that NASA's interest in Global warming is going to get in the way of their Primary Mission of Muslim Outreach"...
But if that were the case why is it that alternatives to those solutions are not given but, more often instead, it is argued that anthropogenic global warming is not happening in the first place?
At least the former tactic I can respect. People who deny all scientific evidence because it disagrees with their worldview I cannot.
Happy people make bad consumers.
12,000 years ago there was a mile of ice where I live. A few weeks ago it was 28C(normally about 5C this time of the year). So yes there is climate change. But every year the Hurricane people have said that there would be X hurricanes this year; yet nearly every year they were very wrong. Often they got it exactly wrong as to big years and quiet years. So I am leery of any predictions that go far into the future when we can all agree that weathermen's (climatologists) predictions are basically a joke.
Also in the 1970s these same climatologists were claiming that the ice age was right around the corner.
I am absolutely not equipped to say that they are right or wrong. What I will say is that they are often wrong about what is going to happen tomorrow. So I place zero value of what they say will happen years into the future. I will buy their analysis of the past, the science of making a history of what happened is getting better and better. The why.... not so much.
If I were a government official making plans I would plan for 3 scenarios. It gets warmer, it gets colder, it stays the same.
Well, not just the Medieval Optimum, but other warm periods existed in human history, warmer than now. . . After all, in the 1300's, wine grapes grew in Britain, and Greenland WAS Green. CO2 is a FOLLOWING indicator of warming, with a 500-1000 year delay,
And, of course, solar input is NOT constant: it's looking like we're heading into another Solar Minimum, like the Maunder Minimum, the Dalton Minimum, and the Spörer Minimum.
In parts of the U.S., it's already significantly cheaper to use solar power than fossil fuels. What is most needed at this point, at least in the U.S., is a more flexible, lower resistance power grid so that solar power from a sunny day in Texas can adequately make up for the bleak midwinter in Oregon. This is useful whether we move to "green" power or not.
The bigger problem is China and other early industrial nations. As long as new nations transition from agrarian economies to industrial economies using coal as their primary means of power production, no amount of regulation in modern countries is going to improve things; it will only keep them from getting worse at an ever-accelerating pace.
What we need to solve this is a ban on U.S. and European companies building coal-based plants in other countries—make it as hard as possible for developing nations to get their start using coal and as easy as possible for them to get their start using more modern power production.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is simply not true. The economy has faulted because of massive fraud in the banking sector. Thanks to deregulatory policies of Larry Summers, Paul Ruben, and Alan Greenspan, we have no paper-trail to bring changes, since bankers were no longer required to underwrite loans. We had people printing money for themselves, and the greed got so intense, that the entire banking system is in jeopardy.
All of this has nothing to do with investing in renewable technologies -- or including the price of pollution into burning CO2. It can be phased in gently over 20 years.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"When people are comparing what is happening now to those predictions, they can see they fail to match up."
Citation needed. When you are engaging in skeptical analysis, you need to show your work. If the majority of scientists agree, but you have found that they are wrong, you need to show the empirical evidence. Which predictions have you falsified? Using what data?
How about a spot check of your work? Let's see if we can tell whether your way is to use science or subterfuge.
Venice Skepticism: You reference a prediction that observed increases in the rate and severity of floods in Venice will abate over coming years, but do not provide empirical evidence that it has been abating. The paper you reference says on the first page that predicting changes in storm surge levels is inherently uncertain. It provides no significant empirical events that could be a cause for a reversal of the current trend, and relies on a new way of modelling the problem which has not been empirically tested. There is empirical evidence that it has been increasing, as well as empirically tested models that predict the flooding will continue. A claim that the current trend will reverse without empirical evidence -- with nothing more than an untested model that gives the answer you want -- is not science.
Greenland Sea Level Rise: You claim to refute the observation that the accelerating breakup of Greenland's ice sheet may lead to increased sea levels by showing evidence that the sea levels have not risen yet. The fact that levels have not risen in the past does not contradict the prediction that they will rise in the future if the Greenland ice continues to break up.
Those are the first two stories on your "False Alarms" page, not cherry-picked, just the first two. They are completely without rational or scientific merit. They are exactly the sort of thing TFA claims are at the heart of global warming criticism. I love rational skepticism -- but based on the first two examples on your own website, I can reach no other conclusion than that you are a shining example of intentional disinformation with a shoddy veneer of scientific inquiry.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
All the fundamentalists have to realise is that God made them stewards, and isn't going to bail out their ass if they fail -- and that is the only basis needed to engage positively in the AGW debate. However, fundamentalists have allowed politics to inform their faith.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
They just happen to be together as part of the same political party in part because decades ago the Democrats ousted the God believers with it's position on abortion
Actually, if you look at the history, you will see that christians stayed out of politics until Reagan, who made a concerted effort to bring fundamentalists into the fold, with the lure of political power.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Are you sure you bought enough carbon credits to cover the cost of your post?
An intelligent and wise person would look deeply into both claims -- and the sources of those claims. An idiot would just interpret incoming information in a self-serving way, since they are right.
/are/ an idiot, since they is no intellectually serious debate on AGW. I could provide you with facts, however, research shows that presenting facts causes ignorant people to dig their heels in even more.
Judging from your comment, you
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It's not surprising that people are becoming skeptical of GW. If you rewind 10-15 years they where saying the Statue of Liberty would be underwater by now. There would be palm tree's growing in Alaska. The equator would be on fire.. etc. Well none of that stuff has happened.
I don't deny climate change at all. But the way our governments are going about the issue is totally flawed. They over regulate everything to death in the US/EU pushing industry to places like China and India where there is zero regulation. That gizmo is still going to get built. Is it going to be built in a clean US/EU factory or in China where they just dump the waste in to the river? Its all the same planet.
Any effort to regulate emissions is pointless unless its adapted across the board by all the major nations. Until then it just looks like another shady way for some governments to control and tax their people.
I have to return some videotapes...
A number of historians have written about this topic, and what history says isn't encouraging.
Quite a lot has been written about the history of the "Fertile Crescent", whose core area was what we now call Syria and Iraq. 3000 years ago, it was a a fertile area, semi-arid but covered with forests and farmland. Now most photos you see from anywhere in the area show a rocky, plant-free landscape. The change is generally attributed to salination that was the result of irrigation projects that started about 8000 years ago, but reached their peak extent maybe 3000 years ago. Historians have said that there is a lot of evidence that the people then (farmers and hydro engineers) understood the problem of soil salinification, and understood that the solution is over-watering to leach out the salts. The problem was that, in the short term (of a human life span ;-), it was more profitable to use the limited water supply on the maximal crop area. So salts slowly accumulated, and eventually the farming died out because nothing would grow there any more. This process has been documented in other areas, but this is one area in which we know that the people continued maximizing their short-term profit even though they knew of the long-term disaster that would result.
Actually, it seems that the problems there aren't as serious as they look. Back in the 1970s and 80s, an interesting series of experiments were conducted: The researchers leased plots of land of 1 to 2 square-km, built goat-proof fences around them, then sat back and watched. This was done across the southwest-Asian "desert" area, roughly from Syria to Pakistan. The results were that a year later, every such experimental plot of land had turned into "grassland" (or prairie if you prefer). The conclusion was that the entire southwest-Asian desert is artificial. If we would remove the grazing animals from the area for one year, it would all revert to grasslands. Then the grazing animals could be brought back, since the land would support them. As long as the population of grazers was then kept low enough, the area could become several orders of magnitude more productive than it is now. But the result has been to ignore this. There's no way you can get the governments or the farmers in that area to cooperate with such a project, when it requires taking the land out of production for a year.
In both of these cases, the general population may not have understood the issue. The local technical experts (including the farmers) did and do. But their short-term interests have always been to maximize this year's profit, partly because if they don't do that, they'll be bankrupt and out of business. So the ongoing disaster continues.
The "global warming" issue is pretty much the same story. We've documented the process for centuries, and have detailed information for the last half-century showing conclusively that the changes are primarily due to human activity. But the people who run our economies have the usual interest in short-term profit, partly because if they don't behave this way, they'll lose to the others who go with the short term.
Anyway, history says that we probably won't do much about the issue, even though we have enough information to know how to do so. And, since the evidence says that the recent warming is mostly due to human activity, we can say that we now have the ability to control our climate if we wish. But we can only do this on a rather large scale, and we know pretty well that humanity won't organize on the scale that it takes to actually carry out such projects.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I want to abduct you and tie you to a chair and force you at gunpoint to eat bucketfuls of those "embryos" over-easy.
The right's approach to debating climate change always perplexes me.
Since when has scientific consensus, or any kind of consensus of anybody's opinion been equivalent to truth? Study the history of science, or even just plain history of humanity. The majority scientific opinion once upon a time was that the earth was flat, everything could be made out of the 4 elements of air water Earth and fire. etc. etc.... If all the erroneous ideas of times past and of today were collected into a book, it would likely be one of the thickest books ever published.
The Earth has been much warmer and much colder, long before humans started driving SUVs and flying airplanes, thereby burning large quantities of oil. This is indeed a chicken little manifestation that does not exist except in the minds of those who have an agenda of more government control. Personally I am waiting for some warmer, drier spring weather here in Oregon.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
You mean the guy who went around literally whipping peddlers because they were selling stuff in his temple?
My blog
"Maybe we can have some scientists say that a god revealed to them that it dislikes the smell of vehicle exhaust"
Actually, God did reveal thousands of years ago, that he is going to heat up the sun 7 times hotter:
Isaiah 30:26 Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.
Revelation 16:8-9 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.
Therefore, someday in the future, we will get REAL global warming, not because you are driving a gas guzzling SUV or running your air conditioner from a coal burning power plant.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Once those in control of the climate science debate gained domination of their little corner of acadamia they began to consolidate their position by being abusive toward dissent until they had a core group within which they could shape the academic discourse and control peer review and publication. They had won.
Now of course they go out to sell their strategy to the wider world and they just can't act like courteous, rational folk. They are still in "drive out the heretics" mode who believe they can just tell the world what to believe and how to act based on their authority as the high priests of climate. And that doesn't go over well with the rest of us. You have to sell it until you get enough of a base of consensus in the wider population that you have control in the larger population and can move back into consolidation mode and begin driving out the heretics again.
It's about messaging. To become the tyrant you must first stroke the public with your velvet glove until they are docile and accepting. Then you unglove the iron fist. Not the other way around.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sorry; the data says it HAS BEEN a cycle. It was warm in Roman times; it was cold in the Middle Ages. It was warm in the 9th-12th centuries - warm enough for the Vikings to find grape vines in "Vinland", which we now know was Labrador. Then it got cold in the 1300s, enough to freeze the Greenland coastline so that the Vikings couldn't get back into their former homes. In 1776, the Hudson River froze so solidly that General Washington's troops dragged cannons across the ice.
In the mid-1800's, it started to get warm again. The Hudson no longer freezes, and in Hans Christian Andersen's neighborhood, you can no longer ice-skate. The trend, at the moment, is upward. But the historical record gives us pretty clear hints that the upward trend probably won't continue. And even the IPCC data indicates that there has been NO temperature increase in the last 10 years, even though the mathematical models said there SHOULD HAVE BEEN an increase. They were even writing emails to each other about how to "hide the decline" in the temperature data, because the DATA didn't agree with the MODEL.
See? Data. As the stockbrokers tell us, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results", but Jim Hansen wants us to bet the entire economy that the 2,000 year cyclical behavior will suddenly jump up and never come down again. I didn't believe that when the gold bugs wanted me to buy gold, and I didn't believe the "It can only go higher!" assurances that the local realtors were giving me in 2005. And I don't believe it now from the Warmies.
That's a straw man. I would only find it hard to argue with people who think that murder is OK because such people cannot be found.
Let's refrain from such flimsy arguments.
My position that no person should be compelled by law to have anything in his or her body if she doesn't want it there, even if that thing is another human being.
Not even for a little while.
Its never quite so clear cut. There are those who think murder is wrong, but then kill with premeditation in the name of national defense.